The Wizard eBook

“Messenger,” he said, “this cross
that you have given me to bear is heavy indeed.”

“Yes, Hokosa,” answered Owen, “for
to it your sins are nailed.”

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PASSING OF OWEN

Once she was outside of Owen’s house, Noma did
not tarry. First she returned to Hokosa’s
kraal, where she had already learnt from his head
wife, Zinti, and others the news of his betrayal of
the plot of Hafela, of his conversion to the faith
of the Christians, and of the march of the impi
to ambush the prince. Here she took a little spear,
and rolling up in a skin blanket as much dried meat
as she could carry, she slipped unnoticed from the
kraal. Her object was to escape from the Great
Place, but this she did not try to do by any of the
gates, knowing them to be guarded. Some months
ago, before she started on her embassy, she had noted
a weak spot in the fence, where dogs had torn a hole
through which they passed out to hunt at night.
To this spot she made her way under cover of the darkness—­for
though she still greatly feared to be alone at night,
her pressing need conquered her fears—­and
found that the hole was yet there, for a tall weed
growing in its mouth had caused it to be overlooked
by those whose duty it was to mend the fence.
With her assegai she widened it a little, then drew
her lithe shape through it, and lying hidden till
the guard had passed, climbed the two stone walls
beyond. Once she was free of the town, she set
her course by the stars and started forward at a steady
run.

“If my strength holds I shall yet be in time
to warn him,” she muttered to herself.
“Ah! friend Hokosa, this new madness of yours
has blunted your wits that once were sharp enough.
You have set me free, and now you shall learn how
I can use my freedom. Not for nothing have I been
your pupil, Hokosa the fox.”

Before the dawn broke Noma was thirty miles from the
Great Place, and before the next dawn she was a hundred.
At sunset on that second day she stood among mountains.
To her right stretched a great defile, a rugged place
of rocks and bush, wherein she knew that the regiments
of the king were hid in ambush. Perchance she
was too late, perchance the impi of Hafela
had already passed to its doom in yonder gorge.
Swiftly she ran forward on to the trail which led
to the gorge, to find that it had been trodden by
many feet and recently. Moving to and fro she
searched the spoor with her eyes, then rose with a
sigh of joy. It was old, and marked the passage
of the great company of women and children and their
thousands of cattle which, in execution of the plot,
had travelled this path some days before. Either
the impi had not yet arrived, or it had gone
by some other road. Weary as she was, Noma followed
the old spoor backwards. A mile or more away
it crossed the crest of a hog-backed mountain, from
whose summit she searched the plain beyond, and not
in vain, for there far beneath her twinkled the watch-fires
of the army of Hafela.